Web Design Versus Web Development

The terms web designer and web developer are used interchangeably in the media and advertisements. But, they are not the same thing. Design involves what the visitor sees on your website, development involves the site’s functionality. This article explores the difference between these two disciplines.
 

A website contains several distinct aspects:

• Look and feel – primarily the graphics, color scheme, navigation elements, etc.
• Content – information, products, etc available on the site.
• Functionality – functionality includes interactive features that the web site provides to the visitors and the required infrastructure needed to provide them.
• Usability – the site from a visitor’s perspective and includes things like program interactions, navigation and usefulness.

Website Templates

Website templates are web page designs created by professional web designers that are sold to others for their use. Templates normally have dummy content used as a placeholder so you can see what a finished page will look like. A template is an easy way for a novice to create a good-looking professional quality websites quickly and easily.
 

Most of the commercially available templates can be found in a variety of themes and color schemes. Theme templates come complete with appropriate graphic for each theme. If you have some graphic or web design skills and a knowledge of HTML, you can create a customized professional looking website at a fraction of the time it takes to create everything yourself. Just remember you don’t own the copyright to the design.

Before selecting a template, you will need to identify the goals you have in mind for your website so you can select the most appropriate template.

Photo - Image Optimization

Photo Optimization is necessary to allow a web page to load in the shortest amount of time possible. Fast loading time require small files. This article discusses the methods used for photo optimization.

In an ideal world, a web designer could use the highest quality photos and have the webpage download lightening fast. Fast loading requires small file sizes for pictures. Unfortunately, there is a trade off between picture quality and file size.

Web surfers are a notoriously impatient bunch. If a website takes too long to load, they will just click away and never come back.

Web Design Guidelines

The goal of most web designers is to create an attractive, easily accessible and functional website that will convince the visitor to do something. Creating such a website requires good graphic design, easy and intuitive site navigation, logical site layout and good web copy. The following suggestions are general web design guidelines.

Web Content

You want the visitor to see you as a knowledgeable information source and/or a reputable business. Poor grammar and spelling will immediately reduce your credibility. Remember that people use the internet to find information. Whether you are selling your own product or recommending someone else’s products, you must first provide valuable information to the visitor or they will click away and find a website that gives them what they what they want.

W3C and Validation

Who is W3C? W3C stands for the World Wide Web Consortium. The goal of W3C is to provide a set of web standard and guidelines that will help alleviate the problem of code incompatibility in the hundreds of different web browsers in use throughout the world today.

The standards are only a guideline, but smart web designers and web developers pay heed to what the organization has to say. In fact many of the web programming jobs found on web design freelancer job boards, specifically requests that the code used to build a website is W3C validated. Although fairly common for XHTML and HTML it is becoming increasingly important especially if the web site is a total CSS web site.

Web Page Optimization

We all want to have the most attractive website that leaves a visitor wide-eyed and completely dazzled. Usually an extremely attractive website design involves lots of graphical elements, increasing the overall page size which causes the page to download slowly to the browser. This article will provide some useful tips on how to keep your website design attractive but still downloads quickly.

As the average internet bandwidth rate per computer is raising, more and more webmasters allow themselves to develop complex websites laden with heavy graphic elements. In extreme cases you can find websites that take as much as a few minutes to load their content in your browser. Of course the user will never wait that long for a website to load, and will move on to the next website in his search results.

eCommerce Website Design

eCommerce websites have their own unique character that is designed to lead the visitor to one simple task – make an online purchase. A web designer needs to consider a variety of online selling principles while designing an eCommerce website. In this article we will try to take a look at some of the major design aspects that you must have in an eCommerce website.

Many of you are probably already asking why eCommerce website design is different from any other website design. They all need to be attractive, well organized and use the right colors that fits the website spirit and so on. Your instincts are good. However a close look at some successful eCommerce websites will reveal the conceptual differences that are typical in a successful eCommerce website.

An eCommerce website needs to follow certain selling principles:

1. Give the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping.
2. Make certain you provide sufficient information on who owns the website and why they should be trusted.
3. The website must be easy to use. If it isn’t, the visitor will go to your competitor.

Those principles are not new. We all know those basics from our day to day experiences in the mall, shopping center and every other market place that is waiting for us to open up our wallets. The big challenge for a web designer is how to translate those conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that in most supermarkets the bread stand is placed at the far end of the building, yet you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes they even use a special air duct to carry the smells). That has been done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to draw us through the store where we are exposed to all sorts of tempting goodies as we go to get our loaf of bread.

How do you draw an imaginarily path in a web page? A path designed to lead the visitor to do what you want him to do…make an online purchase. Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In a website the distance from one point to the other is pretty much the same, so the exit is always right there. In a website you can try to order the “shelf” in the way you think will best expose the visitor to many of your products, but there is always a chance that he will find a short cut to another page that can also be the way off your site.

As can be see, although putting your products on the web is much easier than renting space and opening a supermarket. However, selling your products on the web can be difficult.

A good eCommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. Sometime web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-eCommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these web pages the only link is to the order form. Sales letters are not the most typical eCommerce website because they usually sell only one product. That allows the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it an advantage. All the facts about the product have been presented to the user is a smart way while every few lines he has the option to click on the order form. If he is not yet convinced he will have the option to continue to read more facts and testimonials about the products. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are actually selling.

“What about online shops?” Online shops have to deal with more than one product. Of course, the greater number of products increases the complexity of the website. Sophisticated eCommerce websites use a variety of personalization technologies in an effort to determine the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are a major part of advanced eCommerce websites. However this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an eCommerce website’s personalization technology has a major influence on its design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided to push their client’s books to a visitor based on that visitor’s past orders combined with the statistics they had collected on all visitors used to predict what someone looking at a specific book might also be interested in reading. Today the goal is to try to predict what to offer the user on his first visit as well.

An eCommerce web design is also about the layout. One important aspect is where the user’s eyes look first when accessing a web page. Lots of research has been done on this topic. Most research showed that the middle left side area will attract the most attention followed by the center of the page. By using these techniques web designers try to draw the “walking path” for the visitor’s eye, much like what was done at the supermarket. An experienced eCommerce web designer will know how to create designs to meets those demands.

If you are about to open an eCommerce website or you are already own one, make sure you understand the web design principles for online selling. Consider consulting with an experienced website designer preferably someone who has experience with eCommerce websites. Good luck with your sales.

Aqeel Ahmed Zaman is an Internet Business Consultant and Online Web Marketing Executive for Gexton Pakistan.  Gexton Pakistan offers the complete web solution for your websites from web design layout to the Search Engine Optimization services.

Banner Design Success Techniques

Banners have been a major part of the World Wide Web world since its early days. Copywriters burn the midnight oil looking for new designs that will grab the visitor’s attention and compel him to click on their banner. This article discusses some of the most successful banner designs.

Teasing your curiosity

“Do Not Click Here”. How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity !!!

Copywriters and web designers are always looking for ways to arouse the website visitor’s curiosity. As banner designers their goal is to attract the visitor to the banner, usually completely ignoring the other elements on the web page that are more important to the website owner. However, because the “Do Not Click Here” slogan tells us nothing about what is on the next page, it arouses the visitor’s curiosity and makes it almost impossible not to click on this banner to see what’s behind it.

Simple integrated design

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced their product, “Google”, to potential investors, they mentioned Adwords as a backup option in case they didn’t make any money. We all know how lucky they were that they eventually needed to use that backup plan. What made these “boring” ads such a great success?

Unlike other ads, Adwords neither arouse the visitor’s curiosity nor disturb the main flow of the web page. In fact, the opposite is true. Adwords are meant to look like part of the search results giving the user the feeling that those ads are there because he asked for them. No one has any doubt that this simple design helps Google to promote both their search engine and the Adwords advertising program.

Take part in the action

Banner designers wisely used interactive technologies like Flash to develop type of banners that invite the user to take part in the action. Drawing the user into the action can be accomplished in many creative ways. Some web designers use popular old games elements as part of the scene. You all know the famous game pacman. One of the banners that I like the most is the one where the user is allowed to let pacman “eat” few dollar signs. At the successful completion of this mission, a nice slogan is revealed asking him to open a saving account that will earn money with a fixed interest rate. The idea behind those interactive banners is simple: Let the user take part in the action and then at the right moment when his mind is less resistant, show him the sales message. Those interactive banners proved to be very efficient. Their biggest disadvantage is that most webmasters will not allow that kind of banner because it distracts too much from the web page content.

Back to Black and White

Website designers are always seeking to be different with their design ideas. One banner fashion trend that can be found lately is Black and White banners. Although research shows that blue and yellow are the most efficient color to use in a banner, Black and White banners have been seen a lot lately. It’s probably something that will eventually vanish, but the idea behind it is to be different and to make the user wonder what’s up and hopefully click on the banner to find out.

Get Out of the box

Have you heard about the www.gexton.com? If not, check out this website before continuing to read this article. This website has proven that creative thinking not only can bring you money but also create a whole new trend. Right after the milliondollarhomepage.com got the internet community’s attention, many designers used this idea to design a banner on which they sell a 10x10 pixel area. Like the original concept, this banner design had its impact. Advertisers are investing money on these ad spaces while at the same time visitors are curious enough time after time looking at those unorganized pixel banners to click on them.

What about the next trends

What the next trends of banner design will be is something that probably no one can accurately predict. It’s up to some web designer to come up with a new concept that proves to be efficient. There is no doubt that in the future we will see new ways of designing banners, especially when more and more advertising budgets are being spent on the internet instead of commercial TV and other types of advertising media. I guess we will just need to be patient.

Aqeel Ahmed Zaman is an Internet Business Consultant and Online Web Marketing Executive for Gexton Pakistan.  Gexton Pakistan offers the complete web solution for your websites from web design layout to the Search Engine Optimization services.

When Designing Your Site

As a web design is becoming cheaper, people are willing to pay less and less. It has gotten to the point where many people, affordable website design is the design that they themselves do.

Web Design Programs

Web design courses and programs make it so easy to get your website on the grounds that many people will not even pay for a professional website design at low prices. They feel that they were wrong if they do not do it by themselves.

While I understand the do-it-yourself feel, still has a sense of serious attempts to help a web developer. Just because you can design your own website does not mean that you have the skills, knowledge, or technical experts to do it well.

On the contrary, many of the greatest champions of the accessible design of web sites are the worst you've ever seen. These broken links, bad layouts, flash applets do not work, and the user interface poor.

About Amateur technicians Web Design

These aspiring amateur web designers must understand that they can - and should - have both. A company must have a web design that is also accessible web design quality. Otherwise there are just shooting ourselves in the foot.

In designing the website with Flash

This is especially true if you use flash design courses online. You can make your own design affordable website for simple web pages that consist mainly of text and links, but when the applications are complex, it is time to call a professional. Believe it or not, you can find web designers affordable for virtually every need.

There are web designers for many out there now that many are willing to give fair treatment to get a job! It will not cost an arm and a leg, and make your page look better and more professional your company.

Of course, not all accessible website designs are the same. Just because someone promises you an affordable web site design does not mean you should hire. There is no official certification program for Internet professionals.

He cannot learn more about website design for you! Find someone to do the affordable web design with a body of work that you love. Insist on seeing a portfolio before hiring! If in doubt, ask for references. Or, you may decide to build your own website - in any case is very well depending on your time and money available.

For more Information:

www.gexton.com

Web Design: To Create A Simple Interest for Visitor.

Developed is not always better when you are designing a website.

Type of sites has changed dramatically in recent years. Strangely, the early days of the Internet, a web design simple, was not that great consideration. You see, it was a real sign of talent to design a complex site that worked.

Easy and simple - it was then, now

The simple design of the site was relatively easy because the computer power was so limited. Not only have enough speed Internet, or enough computing power, so the only real Mavericks could be complicated, flashy page that makes it work.

But now, simple Web design is the end all and all among the many Web professionals. You see, people get sick from too broad, difficult to navigate websites. Make no mistake - they have their place. Yet among corporate customers in particular, is to have simple, elegant, and point to the site is considered the best way to go today.

Build your own simple website

One reason behind this is that simple web design has become easier than ever for you to put on average. Although Web developers to create even the best web sites, there are many existing models to build your own website that can make the process easier - or a web design course may be to your taste if you like things like html or php technology.

Webmaster Programs

With a simple web design program, you can build a store, provide information about your company or organization, provide links, and do whatever you want on the Internet - while maintaining a professional appearance.

Do It Yourself or Professional Web Designer?

Of course, even if you want a simple web design, you may even consider hiring a professional. Even a simple site will benefit from a stylistic flourish a professional designer can give.

Like any other business, the professionals always perform better than amateurs. Many web developers the contract on a per project, so if you have a simple web design that you can be very affordable. They will work with you to implement a project according to your design ideas and suggest improvements when they see them.

Simple does not work on all web design projects

If you are running a special effects studio, a design firm, or other high artistic practice, you can go for flash instead of minimalism. As you can soften it seems, can be a good idea to take advantage of the speed of modern Internet to make their very pop charts.

You can play with different ideas before hiring a professional. Sometimes the best way to understand is what you really need to meet your needs.

You can learn more about designing your own website simply by going here. Now, I hope to be a little more knowledge on the best options for web design. Now go build your website!

For more Information:

www.gexton.com

The Templates: Web Design.

We do website designs to shine Website Design

If you're like me, you like the idea of ​​great looking web site - and you have a web design course or two, but has about as much as possible. You need something that seems incredible, but you have problems with the program, simply have no time to learn and then complete it.

Then you might just want to give your ideas site, because it just seems impossible. But what you may not know is that you can find web design templates that are easy to use and will always give you a really nice site, when finished.

The Cost of Web Design VS Time to create

You may have to pay for a good web design template, but will be worth the money. They are also cheaper than paying someone to build a site from scratch and then perform maintenance and upgrades all the time.

When you really serious about a website, then you cannot leave, because it is too long. Would you like to visitors something new? If you use a simple web design template, you can make this one of his, and it can be done fairly quickly.

Web design templates must be functional and beautiful

You should look for models of web design that look good, but it is also very friendly. If you can find one that is WYSIWYG, you have found a good program. These initials stand for "what you see is what you get" and they are very simple for almost anyone to use. These templates web design is pretty well cut and paste, and should stay looking good no matter what you end up doing them. If you do not have to do with WYSIWYG, you can mess with a few mouse clicks.

Where can you find good Web design templates?

You may have to do some research to find models of web design that work well with their level of experience and look right. You can find a lot already and only have to pay for it.

Other times, you may need to be someone to build web pages for you, but once again, to buy a tailor-made web design template will be much cheaper than having someone build your website. Take time to find the right one for you, and then play around to see what it can do. Anyone can be a great looking website these days, and these models are the main reason that you can.

For more Information:

www.gexton.com